Audubon PTSA Board of Directors Meeting Minutes Thursday, November 16th, 2017

Transcription

1 Audubon PTSA Board of Directors Meeting Minutes Thursday, November 16th, 2017 Call to Order Yumna Green, President, called the meeting to order at 6:55 pm. Attendees: Board members present: Yumna Green, Lilach Geppert, Trina Ring, Hanyue Jiang, Celine Moreau, Michela Casazza, Anna Pauker, Ganesh Sankarakumar Invitees: Volunteers, Chairs Excused Absents: Yukie Sakurai Invitees: Office Staff: 2nd Grader Teachers. Debbie Ellis Ashleigh Garcia Dauri Kreidel-Reimer Ally Meyer Kyle Hutchinson A quorum was present for the entire meeting. Proper meeting notice was provided. Yumna welcomed the 2nd grade team, and thanked them for joining the meeting as staff representatives. Approval of past Minutes The Minutes from the Board of Directors Meeting on October 12 th 2017 were presented. No amendments were requested. Trina motioned that the minutes be approved as presented. Michela seconded. October meeting minutes are approved. From Staff representatives Yumna welcomed and thanked the 2nd grade teachers for joining the November Board meeting. The teachers thanked PTSA for everything.

2 They mentioned that the Hearing & Vision event went very well. It was very well organized. Michela thanked the teachers for their flexibility. Regarding the extended classes, the changes that were implemented through collaboration between Anita (our chair) and Ms. Reinardy (librarian) are producing positive results. Library is in better condition after the extended classes are finished each day. There is at least one day a week where there is no extended class in the library which is very helpful to the librarian. Yumna would like also to thank all the school staff for their support by purchasing staff memberships. We ve got enough staff memberships to qualify for the 100% teacher membership award. Thanks for your support. From the President Nothing to add to the report. From the Treasurer Trina would like to explain how Raz-Kid costs have been posted in the budget following last month discussion. At last month s meeting we reallocated contingency funds to help pay for more Raz-Kids licences than we had budgeted for initially. So we spent more money in that line item as compared to the budget. Instead of just attributing the added expense to Contingency, she is adjusting the line times of her copy of the budget to show WHERE the contingency money is going. The target is to keep the track of how much we spend where so that next year we will know where we need more budget dollars. In addition it helps when it comes to filing our taxes, to know where our contingency dollars were spent/reallocated to E-Learning Subscription RazK. It has been changed from $1,600 to $1, (Increased the budget $71.12 to accommodate our vote last month to add in the additional subscription.) 3.13 Staff Appreciation. It has been changed from $1,150 to $1,450 (Increased the budget $300 per our vote tonight.) 3.24 Contingency Student Support. It has been changed from $2,500 to $2, (Decreased the budget to show what is remaining after we added a total of $ to areas as stated above.) Trina also informed the board members that taxes needed to be filed by (11/15/2017), and the filing for our PTSA was completed on time. Communication Enews chair: Chitra Ramalingam is appointed Chair for the enews with no objection of the Board. Chitra has already been trained. Facebook

3 A lot of work has been done by the communication team to move forward. Today what is stopping us: We need to create some documents, either amendments to the standing rules or a separate policy document, to outline guidelines, procedures, protocols, etc. (e.g. will every board member be admin?, closed group or open group?) Ganesh along with a committee of interested board members will come up with a proposal to be presented and discussed by the board at the January board meeting. Then the board will finalize a document with all the details of the rules/policies around our Facebook page. It would also be helpful to inform Kimo of our FB page/group, as a courtesy before going live to our community. Fundraising Nothing to add to the report School Services Anne, chair of Staff Appreciation, would like to talk about the slowdown of donations during the 1 st appreciation event. She noticed a big lack of donations from the parents. It is problematic because our staff members are increasing in number, which means we need more donations than in the previous years but we have less coming in. She is trying to figure out ways to customize the next events with much more reminders to the parents to donate food, but Audubon PTSA has had a general decrease in parent involvement/ volunteering over the past 2 or 3 years that is troubling. So as a PTSA, we need to think of ways to address that problem because it is affecting all of our events and programs. For now though, the board sees a need to address the immediate concern of not enough resources to achieve our Staff Appreciation goals. Ganesh motioned to approve reallocating 300USD from the contingency to the Staff Appreciation budget, Hanyue seconded. Motion passed. Question from Ganesh regarding the parking lot. 2/3 days no one was there for the parking lot. We will ask Julie to provide the schedule to know when we need more people. Maybe we could ask the support of the teachers to get the parents involved in particular with the 4 th and 5 th grade families. The good news is that maybe Alfredo is ready to be the chair next year. Appointment of ART Docent Co Chair. Jennifer Jones is appointed as Co Chair for Art Docent with no objection from the board. From Outreach Nothing to report

4 Student Enrichment We would like to point out the decrease of the number of participants in Math Challenge. We will keep track of it to see what happens going forward. Events Nothing to Report Discussion items CD player for the Music teacher Yumna explained the process to reimburse the cost of classroom supplies for the teachers. Normally PTSA is not authorized to fund electronics devices and food, bought as treats. However, PTSA received a request from the Janine Sullivan (K teacher) to fund the purchase of a CD/ cassette player for her classroom. Her old one broke and she has cassettes and CDs that she likes to play in the classroom. Seeing as there is no access to the internet on such a device and seeing as the students will not use it individually, and seeing as the intent of the rule was not to exclude devices of this nature, the board decided to make an exception and grant her request. The board approved the request for the purchase of the CD player. Trina will let Mrs Sullivan know that she can use a portion of her classroom enrichment funds to purchase a CD/Cassette player. Facebook Page The board members would like to continue the discussions, about The Facebook Page of Audubon PTSA. Michela asked whether it is a page or a group discussion. For the moment it is a page, but there are a lot of possibilities. To join the group, the people must be part of Audubon community. To be sure they have kids at the school, a question will be asked before connection. We will have to decide whether it will be a close or an open group Board members propose to set up a committee, which will discuss about the rules and then will get back to the board with proposals and recommendations. The committee will be made up with Lilach Ganesh Anna We will ask Chitra if she is interested in joining the committee too. Adjourn President, Yumna adjourned the meeting at 8:08pm * * * * * APPENDICEES FROM MEETING INCLUDED BELOW FOR YOUR REFERENCE

5 Appendix A: President s Report President: Yumna Green / Lilach Geppert Thank you to Anna who attended the November Council PTSA membership meeting with the Co-presidents, Lilach and Yumna - who are required to attend. If you have not yet signed up to attend a Council meeting, please do so. We are still looking for attendees to accompany us to the December, March and June meetings. The sign-up sheet is attached to the end of this report. Please note that the December meeting is the shortest Council meeting of the year because it is when the scholarship baskets are auctioned off to the highest bidder. So, please join us, check out the baskets and make a few bids! Audubon volunteer, Anahita Arya, produced two beautiful gift baskets for our PTSA (Bath Time theme and Tea Time theme) and they will be available for purchase that day along with many others. All basket proceeds benefit graduating seniors in the form of scholarships to successful applicants. Audubon PTSA s SOA was completed by the Presidents and ed to all board members. It is on our website and will be shared with our membership at the Nov 13 th general meeting. Our PTSA is being well run. Thank you, board members,! Our Co-VP of School Services, Alyssum Wodrich, is no longer able to continue in the position due to a personal family situation. Many thanks to Alyssum for her work on behalf of PTSA this year. We will miss her! Please speak to your fellow Audubon parents about serving on the board and invite them to attend a board meeting and/or request a meeting with the Co-Presidents to discuss the roles and have their questions answered. Each open position can be filled by either 1 or more people. The November board meeting will specifically have the first 30 minutes set aside for interested volunteers to meet with board members and chairs. Khris Schaffner will be transitioning the responsibility for the Enews to Chitra Ramalingam before the end of November. Chitra will plan on training a couple of interested volunteers so that back up and future helpers will be on hand when needed. Thank you to Michela Casazza for running our Hearing and Vision event last week and to Yukie Sakurai for putting together a well-attended and well-received Coffee with Kimo this month. Thanks to the wonderful support of our staff members (both classified and certificated staff), Audubon PTSA will be able to apply for the 100% teacher participation membership award! Thank you staff members! There were no EZ-Grant applications submitted for the first round of EZ grants (due date was October 25). The $2,000 in that line item remains available for the second round of grants (due date is Feb 2, 2018). In the absence of an Events VP, and with our next event (Math Puzzle Hunt) taking place in January, Lilach and Yumna met with Denise Ferguson who was one of last year s Events Co- VP s to discuss the scope of the event. Lilach has the notes and materials that Denise used last year and is willing to work with whichever volunteer wants to chair Math Puzzle Hunt this year.

6 Our PTSA, along with a few others in the area, was the victim of a phishing scam recently. Cotreasurer Hanyue received an from Co-president Yumna asking for our bank account balance because money would need to be wired from the account that day (Nov 2 nd ). Thanks to the alert vigilance of both Trina and Hanyue, our money is safe and sound Council Membership Meetings Thursday, September 7, 9:30-11am Thursday, October 5th, 7-8:30pm* - Ganesh Thursday, Nov. 2nd, 9:30-11am - Anna Thursday, Dec. 7th, 9:30-11am Thursday, Jan. 4th, 7-8:30pm* - Trina Thursday, Feb. 1st, 9:30-11am - Michela Thursday, Mar 1st, 9:30-11am Thursday, April 12th, 7-8:30pm* - Celine Thursday, May 3rd, 9:30-11am - Yukie Thursday, June 7th, 9:30-11am *These are evening meetings. The rest are morning meetings. Appendix B: Treasurer s Report Treasurer: Trina Ring / Hanyue Jiang We continued to receive more PTSA Memberships, both from families and Audubon staff. October had a lot of Extended Class sign up activity. It was surprising how much movement went on with people deciding to switch classes or quit or join late. A lot of the teachers purchased classroom supplies dipping into their $300 classroom allocations. We paid our AIM Liability Insurance for the year on October 27, PTSA taxes were started. They are due November 15, Appendix C: Communications Co-VPs Communications: Ganesh Sankarakumar / Anna Pauker After years of very reliable and on-time s, Khris Schaffner - our enews chair - has decided to leave the position at the end of this month for personal reasons. Many thanks to Khris for keeping the Audubon PTSA community informed of the school news via . We really appreciate all her time and effort. Chitra Ramaswamy has kindly accepted to assume the Enews Chair role for the rest of this school year. We are extremely grateful to Chitra for stepping into this role. She will be assuming a coaching role to teach many of us about communication tools, while we also strive to get the PTSA Facebook page up for regular communications for the Audubon

7 PTSA family. Appendix D: Fundraising Report VP Fundraising: Position Open Fundraising Reports for November 16, 2017 Board Meeting Seeing as the VP of Fundraising position is open, the chairs who report to the VP of Fundraising submitted these reports directly to the Presidents, Lilach Geppert-Shapira and Yumna Green. Membership submitted by Chitra Ramalingam Audubon PTSA Membership on November 8 th = 454 PTSA members Back to School Fundraising - submitted by Chitra Ramalingam PTSA donations (NOT as part of OWL package) = $5270 PTSA Donations from 60 OWL Basic = $3480 PTSA Donations from 90 OWL Boost = $5220 PTSA Donations from 31 OWL Sibling = $1798 Total Donations = $15,768 Employee Donation matching = $3,956 Fundraising Dollars thus far = $19,724 Redmond SchoolPool - submitted by Nadia Ahmad & Chitra Ramalingam Audubon participated in the Redmond SchoolPool's 'Walk to School' month in October. Tony had helped put out their banner in front of the school and we put out stakes around the school. Big thanks to Tony and the student council helped us with the school pool reminders to students in their morning announcements. We've received about a 100 school pool cards back and expect a PTSA to get $900-$1000 as part of this fundraising program. We will share the participation metrics when it becomes available. Box Tops submitted by Lisa Wycoff I collected Box Tops at the end of October and submitted them for the November 1st deadline date. If all checks out, PTSA should receive a check for $ in December. Labels for Education Colleen Kroeger I submitted an envelope of labels on November 6th from the October collection. This is likely the last. As soon as the points post, I will send a note with the points available to redeem and PTSA can decide how to spend. This program is wrapping up, so this is our last chance. Jog-a-thon submitted by Alessandra Arosio, Chitra Ramalingam & Yukie Sakurai Nothing to report Appendix E: School Services VP School Services: Michela Casazza Hearing and Vision: Chairs: last minute yours truly The event took place last week: volunteers number was low despite contacting

8 every name on Vicky s list. Only the from the District generated a wave of sign ups; not the targeted number but enough to cover the pit. I just received the same notification by the district for Rose Hill Middle: evidently the problem is widespread. New procedure and last-minute adjustments made the event run faster than expected but we had a big delay due the first graders fieldtrip. Every kid scanned except 4 th graders as per State new regulations. Kindergarten Registration: Chairs: TBD Parking Lot Helpers: Chair: Julie Conley Nothing to report School Pictures: Chairs: Kristina Summers, Colleen Kroeger Pictures delivered (the company mismatched 2 students: they will fix it) Retakes scheduled for 11/16. Groups and New Students will be photographed on 4/17. School Appreciation: Chairs: Anne Dang Anne went over the budget due to massive lack of food donations: next events will be planned accordingly (asking for donations way ahead of time, less perishable foods), or budget increase. Yearbook: Chairs: Valeria Mercz Nothing to report Emergency Preparedness: Chairs: Joshua Kelch, Bekki Malloy, Daniel Lopez Nothing to report Appendix F: Outreach VP Outreach: Yukie Sakurai Coffee and Conversation with Principal Spray and Mr. Maver went well. Lilach Geppert, Celine Moreau, Vicky Gee and Anita Yue attended as well as several parents. There are couple of people I have tried to reach out. Simmi Gupta and Swapna Reddy were

9 introduced by Vicky Gee by Volunteer Sign up site. Simmi Gupta was helping me for making notice slips for the coffee meeting. Swapna is currently working full time, and we will make some time to meet soon in person. Appendix G: Student Enrichment VP Student Enrichment: Position Open Seeing as the VP of Student Enrichment position is open, the chairs who report to the VP of Student Enrichment submitted these reports directly to the Presidents, Lilach Geppert- Shapira and Yumna Green. Reflections submitted by Rachel Pai 1. The due date for Audubon Reflections was 10/ Total 20 entries this year - which is about half of last year (41 entries). It may be that the theme (within reach) this year is harder than last year (what's my story?) There are: 14 visual art - 5 primary (k-2nd grade) & 9 intermediate (3-5th grade), 3 intermediate photography, 2 intermediate literature & 1 dance choreography 3. All entries have been sent to judges 4. Need to prepare art works to be ready to turn in (backing, art sleeves cover, and label info at the back) and enter the info for the winning entries into Reflections portal by 11/ All the winning entries need to be turned in to council by 11/20. I have already signed up for volunteering for the turning in day. 6. Reflections assembly and Reflections ceremony and concert will be on 12/7. Extended Classes submitted by Anita Yue Extended classes program has been going well this last month (Oct.) with nothing significant to report. Though I'd like to call out that we are still in search of a co-chair who can help with ongoing communications with parents and providers and with various requests in registration changes, despite Session 1 having started over a month ago. I'll do my best to attend the Nov-16 board meeting between 6:30-7p to meet any interested volunteers. I hope to resolve the vacancy before the holidays, so we can anticipate and start planning for the upcoming 2 nd session effectively. Math Challenge submitted by Lior Shapira & Lilach Geppert-Shapira Math challenge is chugging along nicely. We finished the 3rd challenge and have just published the 4 th. Art Docent submitted by Athena Rospo & Audrey Guidi & Jennifer Jones 1. Artist in residence was a great success - all 26 classes worked with Audrey over the 1st month. 2. Jen Jones will be joining Athena and Audrey as supplies co-chair, pending board approval. 3. Over 20 docents attended the training at LWRC with Maxine Pippin who developed and presented 5 lessons to expand our lesson library 4. The webpage contains links for lessons and resources for docents. Communication

10 has gone out with these links, including those that are at the district level. 5. Audrey is compiling featured lessons and Athena is ing them monthly - 1st edition went out. 6. Many classes have had their first lesson given by docents. There is in-grade mentoring between experienced and new docents in kindergarten, 1 st & 3rd where the same lessons throughout those grades are being taught and the docents in those grades are team teaching. 7. Mr. Hanson and Mr. Braswell s classes were taught together on October 23 by Athena. This was a solution we tried, given that there were no docents who came forward to lead in Mr. Braswell s class. 8. Conni, Audrey, Jen and Athena met with Joan Livesey to provide guidance on the supplies to be ordered and where to house supplies for the district art curriculum, Deep Space Sparkle. Nothing to report Appendix H: Event VP of Events: Position Open